


An Elegy for Dragons

by Copperonthetongue



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cersei Lives, Daenerys Targaryen Is Not a Mad Queen, Dragonlords, Dragons, Drogon is a good boy, DumbandDumbercanDIAF, F/F, F/M, Families of Choice, Family Feels, Grief, Growing Up, How about we assassinate nobody’s character, Kings Landing doesn’t burn, Lions, M/M, Magic, Multi, Nobody is the bad guy except the actual bad guy., Not the Starks, Politics, She is super pissed off though, The Author Regrets Nothing, This Is Not Going To Go The Way You Think, Wolves, Worldbuilding, alternate season 9, author can’t tag for shit, emotional development, jaime lives, no Mad Queen, no the grey worm/Dany is not a typo, nope - Freeform, oh my, or maybe it will, or the Targaryens, that isn’t necessarily a better choice
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:35:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25102525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Copperonthetongue/pseuds/Copperonthetongue
Summary: As the bells ring Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen chooses to show King’s Landing mercy instead of Fire and Blood..but was it the correct choice? The Dragon Queen now finds herself beset on all sides by her enemies. Perilously alone save for a grieving Grey Worm Daenerys must now find a way to survive the Great Game. A game she never wanted to play at all. Cersei Lannister and the Kingslayer have escaped and the truth about Jon Snow’s parentage is spreading throughout the Seven Kingdoms like wildfire.The Dragon Queen’s next mistake may very well be her last.
Relationships: Daario Naharis/Daenerys Targaryen, Grey Worm/Daenerys Targaryen, Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen
Comments: 43
Kudos: 46





	An Elegy for Dragons

Daenerys watches with cold eyes as the man who’d once been her most trusted advisor is brought into her presence in chains. Once, Tyrion would have stood in honor at her right hand...but there is no place for him beside her now. There never shall be again. She can see him fighting determinedly against the weight of the manacles on his wrists and ankles as Grey Worm leads him into the throne room, see him fighting the fear that threatens to swallow him whole. 

She knows that his fear shouldn’t please her, but the truth is that it does. The look of fear in Tyrion Lannister’s eyes is the one small glimmer of joy she’s found in the debacle that has been the taking of King’s Landing.

Grey Worm’s expression is blank. A nearly perfect mask.... Daenerys knows her general well enough by now that she can read the banked fury in his dark eyes beneath it. She understands his rage. His pain, and to a certain extent she shares it in a small way but Daenerys also knows that the pain Grey Worm endures now is far beyond her own. 

Her own grief feels as if it will drown her but Grey Worm grieves Missandei as she herself had once grieved Drogo. There are no words for that pain. That consuming loss. It has no answer. No end. The only thing that had salved the wound left behind by Rhaego and Drogo’s loss even in a small way for Daenerys herself had been burning the witch who’d killed them alive and hatching her dragons. Without them...

No. 

She will not think of it. 

Not now. 

For now Daenerys must deal with the disaster of the moment, not dwell on old hurts. She is a Queen and a Queen cannot allow herself to forget her duty. Not even in the face of loss and personal suffering. She will deal with her treacherous Hand...and then she will grieve. She cannot bring Missandei back and now she cannot punish her murderer either. Cersei Lannister is gone, along with the Kingslayer, they’ve vanished into the ether and no trace of them has yet been found save an abandoned boat. 

All thanks to the dwarf in chains before her.

Tyrion has aided and abetted the escape of the woman responsible for Missandei’s murder. Daenerys has lost her heart’s sister and Grey Worm has lost half his soul and now their pain has no answer. No ease. Tyrion has robbed them of their justice and as hot as her own fury burns Dany knows that Grey Worm’s burn hotter. His fury runs so deep that it is only the brutal training of the Unsullied that prevents him from killing Tyrion where he stands for what he’s done. Dany knows it as certainly as she knows her own name. 

Grey Worm does not falter in his duty, however.

He marches Tyrion to the foot of the Iron Throne; the heavy steel of the chains threatening to pull the small man down with each step he takes as he tries to match Grey Worm’s far longer stride. Longer than usual, even, Daenerys notes with no small amount of surprise. The ill fitting chains are almost too heavy for Tyrion to move them at all....but the dwarf keeps walking regardless; the metal links clinking and grinding against the stone floor with every stumbling step forward that he takes. 

Despite Tyrion’s obvious discomfort she feels no pity for his struggle. 

She can’t.

Not anymore, not after what he’s done.

Tyrion has betrayed ALL of them and while not long ago at all the very idea of her Hand bound and in chains would have broken Daenerys’s heart into a hundred pieces is does not trouble her now. Missandei had _died_ in the chains she’d so despised all because of Tyrion’s false council. If ever a man has deserved their weight it is Tyrion Lannister. Daenerys also knows that he will not wear them for long, regardless. 

Ill-fitting chains are the least of her former Hand’s troubles. 

Tyrion’s makeshift chains will do for the moment regardless of their quality. They are lucky to have them at all. They were the smallest set that Daenerys had been able to find in the Red Keep and they had still been too large at first.

Much to her surprise however, Lord Baratheon had solved the problem for her quickly enough and Daenerys hadn’t even needed to ask him.

The Usurper’s son had come to her unbidden with soot from the forge still on his cheeks and the altered chains clutched tight in his calloused hands once word had spread of her Hand’s betrayal and the escape of Cersei and Jaime Lannister in the wake of the battle to take King’s Landing. 

The Usurper’s son has now proven himself more faithful than her own Hand. Daenerys had raised him up from bastardy and given him a true name and place in the world. She’d shown him her mettle. The truth of her and for the moment at least his support is entirely hers. She will handle the younger man with care regardless, however, because if she has learned anything at all from the lessons that her life has taught her it is that the loyalty of men is as fickle as a sea wind and twice as treacherous. 

Daenerys has never before felt as utterly and terribly alone in the world as she does now; beset on all sides by her enemies with not a single human soul left in all the world that she dares trust entirely save Gray Worm. Tyrion has betrayed her, as has her former lover -and nephew- Jon Snow. Missandei and Ser Jorah are lost along with Rhaegal and her poor Viserion. 

All she has left now is Drogon and her last remaining child is unfortunately as much burden as benefit at the moment. 

Love him though she does; Drogon’s presence is a goad at the back of Dany’s mind. Fire hot and full of barely restrained fury. He is still wrathful over the loss of Rhaegal and Missandei. It is only her own will that keeps the black dragon passive and if she falters even for a moment she knows that he will vent his rage on the folk of King’s Landing. He cares nothing for their lives.

Drogon hurts and he wants the world to share that hurt as well. Daenerys wishes that she did not understand her child’s rage ...but she does. She understands it all too well because it lives inside of her as too. But unlike her dragon she cannot allow herself to take what she so desperately wants. 

Instead Daenerys pushes her fury away. She smothers her pain beneath the weight of duty and she does it all while watching Gendry from the corner of her eye. The boy is angry. His eyes burn so brightly that it’s a wonder that Tyrion hasn’t burst into flames so fierce is his rage. Cersei Lannister had tried to kill him. Had been complicit in the deaths of his many siblings. Innocent children whose only crime was to have had a lecherous king for a father.

Dany understands. 

Gendry was raised among the common folk. Not as a lord of great title with an easy and secure future laid out before him. Tyrion Lannister may be a dwarf but until very recently privation was something he’d never experienced first hand. He had never been truly afraid for his own future. Everything Gendry Baratheon has, the young man has worked for and acquired for himself and Daenerys has always fared better with the common people than she has with the nobility.

Mostly because unlike the vast majority of rulers she too knows what it is to have nothing. 

She’s been cold and alone. 

Destitute and hungry.

Afraid and helpless to defend herself against those who were stronger and crueler than she was.... and like knows like. Her thoughts threaten to take a darker turn for a long moment before Daenerys forces her wandering mind away from that shadowy path as well. Away from the murky sea of unpleasant memories that she keeps locked away at the back of her mind. 

With pure determination she wrenches herself out of her reverie and shuts away her distracted thoughts in favor of dealing with the matter at hand. There will be time enough for brooding later. 

All the time in the world, in fact.

Now, in this moment, Daenerys must sit atop the throne of her ancestors and look down at the man whose selfish stupidity may well have doomed her reign to failure before it has even truly begun and that knowledge makes her fume. Daenerys has at last taken back her birthright as she’d always said that she would do....but thanks to Tyrion Lannister her victory is hollow. 

Nothing but an empty illusion. 

Her campaign was never about an ugly chair or an ancient castle no matter who’d built them.

It was about her people. 

Her home. 

The home that Daenerys has longed for with all her heart since she was a little girl. Friendless and alone at the mercy of those who’d had none to give she’d dreamed of this moment. Of coming home and sitting on the throne that her ancestors had forged of dragonfire and their own ambition and finally having somewhere to truly belong. 

Sometimes that thought was all that kept her going. 

Home. 

She’dwanted to go home.....yet now that she is here her dream is cold ash in her mouth. This is no victory at all. This is not her home and thanks to Tyrion Lannister it most likely never can be, The people will never accept fully as their Queen while Cersei Lannister still lives. Tyrion had learned nothing from Randyll Tarley and his foolish son. Nothing at all. 

The man had chosen to burn rather than bend the knee because he’d believed that he had another option. While Cersei Lannister still draws breath she will remain the rightful Queen in the eyes of many of the more traditional lords of Westeros and they will act to restore her to the throne. It won’t matter at all to them that she’s a monster...she’s THEIR monster and they would rather keep to the devil they know than live in the world Daenerys means to build.

As long as there is another choice ....there will never be peace. 

Daenerys keeps her face a blank mask as Gray Worm roughly puts Tyrion on his knees before the throne but she can’t loosen her white-knuckled grip on the arms of the throne itself. She’s clutching the metal so hard that the blades have cut her and she can feel her blood trickling down her fingers and soaking into the metal itself. Joining the blood of all those who had sat upon the throne before her. Aegon had left the edges of the blades that the throne had been forged from sharp so that no one who sat upon it would ever sit easy there. 

The pain is distant, however. 

Unimportant. 

Daenerys doesn’t dare let go, regardless. If she loosens her grip on the throne;s sharp-bladed arm she’s not entirely certain she’ll be able to stop herself from strangling Tyrion Lannister to death with her bare hands in front of the entire assembled court. 

...and that is hardly the correct way to begin an already shaky Queenship.

Instead, Daenerys forces herself to count her breaths and control her rage and takes note of how small her former Hand looks from her current position. Tyrion seems so deceptively harmless, now. Sheepish and shamefaced— almost sad— but Daenerys knows better than to underestimate her former Hand. Small the man may be; but Tyrion Lannister’s mind is every bit as twisted and conniving as Tywin Lannister’s had ever been.

Perhaps even more, because Tywin had never been able to hide how dangerous he was.

Tyrion has now finally proven to the world beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is indeed his father’s son and despite their current positions—she on the throne and Tyrion at her feet in chains- ..Daenerys still feels like a fool for falling so easily into the trap he’d laid for her. 

Why didn’t she see it?  
. 

She should have noticed what Tyrion was doing far sooner...but she hadn’t. She’d foolishly believed that the Imp was her friend and that he believed in her. That he shared her dreams and that he wanted to help her break the wheel and make the world a better place for everyone. She’d thought he trusted her as much as she trusted him.

....but it was all lies. 

Every honied word that had come out of Tyrion Lannister’s treacherous little mouth since the moment they’d met had been poison at its core. Every whispered bit of council. Every fireside talk....and Dany had lapped it all up like a desperate fool.

Jorah had been right to mistrust Tyrion. Right to have warned her against him...Daenerys sees it now all too clearly and she wishes desperately that she’d listened to her old friend’s honest council all those years before and killed Tyrion when she first set eyes on him. 

Instead she’d taken him into her household. Into her confidence, she’d called him friend and named him her Hand. Regret is a bitter drought indeed ...and her cup is full to the brim with it. She’d let Tyrion live and sent away her truest friend instead. Never realizing until it was far too late that she was clutching a viper to her breast. 

Without Tyrion’s false council she would have dealt with Cersei when she’d first arrived at Dragonstone instead of playing foolish games of intrigue with the woman. She would never have taken in Varys either, without Tyrion, and so the Spider would then never have had the opportunity to spread the news of Jon Snow’s existence as her brother’s legitimate son. 

The seeds of treason the Spider had sown against her before his demise will blossom in the dark and one day, in due time, they will bear ruinous fruit. Daenerys knows it in her bones already. Thanks to Tyrion Lannister’s treachery the wheel will keep on spinning. 

How many good and loyal men and women will die for her blindness? 

Too many have done the same already.

How many of her Dothraki and her Unsullied gave their lives for a thankless people who’d spat on their footsteps as they passed? No one cared how many of them had been lost or how many widows would water the grass of the Dothraki Sea with their tears. No one but Daenerys herself, that is. Because to the Westerosi, the folk she’d brought with her from Essos were nothing but savages and slaves. 

Good enough to die for them ...but unworthy of their respect or even their thanks.

Just like her. 

She’d seen it for herself first hand at Winterfell. The cold stares and the whispers. The way the Northerners had sneered at her people and glared at them. It hadn’t troubled her men...but it had troubled Daenerys deeply. It had infuriated her almost past bearing but she had naively hoped that perhaps in time the people of Westeros would come to know them and that once they did then they would see in them what Daenerys herself saw. 

People. 

Good people, and bad people; much like themselves.

It was a fool’s dream; Daenerys can see that, now, in hindsight.

So many lives wasted....all because their Queen, their Khaleesi had trusted the wrong man. All because she had taken Tyrion’s Lannister’s advice and drawn out the conflict with Cersei, spreading her own forces too thin in the process.

Tyrion is looking up at her with those soft eyes of his. Staring hopefully at her face as if he believes that somehow this moment might yet work itself out in his favor. 

He is wrong.

His luck has at long last run out because Daenerys has no mercy left in her broken heart left for him.

Daenerys forces herself to take a slow breath and unclench her jaw. It is time to show the people of Westeros what sort of Queen she intends to be. A mistake here will be costly and there is no more room for error, now. Her next mistake will very likely be her last.

If she is too harsh they will see her father’s ghost in her and call her the Mad Queen. It will be the rallying cry of the Lannister Loyalists and those who will prefer to support Jon Snow as King rather than accept a foreign woman as their Queen. Jon himself may not want the throne...but that does not mean that others will not conspire to put him there against his will. 

If she is too lenient, they will think her weak and the Lords will fall on her like hungry wolves and tear her apart...and there is little she will be able to do about it save flee or engage in wholesale slaughter to make them too afraid to court her wrath. Her armies are spent. All her dragons save Drogon are lost. 

There can be no more mistakes. 

She will succeed or she will die...and Daenerys will be damned to the seven hells before she allows Tyrion Lannister to be the thing that ruins her. 

When she at last feels steady enough to speak and break the tense silence that has filled the throne room her voice is soft and calm but even to Daenerys’s own ears the tone of it is winter sharp and biting. She is not overwrought with fury...but she makes no secret of her displeasure and she is very very displeased indeed. “ It appears that we are back where we started, you and I. “ 

“Once before, you stood before me just as you do now. Do you recall, my Lord?” 

Some of the hope in Tyrion’s eyes has begun to wither and die but Daenerys pushes away the visceral pleasure the sight of it brings her ruthlessly. Now is not the time for petty vengeance. She is a Queen, not a petty thug. Gloating is beneath her dignity. The moment draws out, razor then and taut ...but it isn’t until she raises a brow in question that Tyrion dares to answer her. 

“Yes, your grace.” He says, and his voice weaker than Daenerys has ever heard it before. Cautious too, and his eyes never once leave her face. “—we have.” 

Tyrion’s throat bobs as he swallows. He is afraid now. Daenerys can see it as clear as Myrish crystal. Genuinely afraid. He’d anticipated her anger. He’d expected sound and fury and he’d been prepared to turn her temper to his advantage as he always had before. Invoking her father’s ghost to make her doubt herself and question her own motives. Making her more pliant. 

Ever the peacemaker. 

Advocating for mercy and forgiveness....even for her most dangerous enemies. Daenerys has managed to catch him off guard with her calm and he doesn’t know what to do with it. Her clever hand has no battle strategy ready for what Daenerys is giving him now. 

Ice and implacable will. 

“ I trusted you, Tyrion Lannister. “ Daenerys says, pitching her voice to carry and watching him shift uneasily on his knees. 

“ ......I took you into my service when no one else in all the world would have welcomed you. A convicted Kingslayer. A kinslayer, too, because the king you killed was your own nephew twice over and before your departure you even murdered your own father.”

“....Yet I fed you at my table and I gave you my friendship. I named you my Hand above men who had served me loyally for far longer than you ... and now you have repaid me for that trust with vile treason.” 

“...your grace, please. I —“ Tyrion interjects, something like desperation building in his eyes. This isn’t going the way he’d imagined and so his first instinct is to seize control of the conversation. 

That will not happen. 

“Silence! “ Daenerys says sharply, cutting him off before he can finish his appeal. Her hold on her temper wavers for a moment. Wavers so badly that Drogon feels her fury. Her anger sparks his own into new life and the black dragon’s answering scream of threat echoes from the rooftop where he’s perched himself. His shifting weight causes a fine dust to drift down from the ceiling under his weight and everyone save her Unsullied flinches instinctively at the sound of it and casts fearful eyes at the ceiling. Hoping that it will continue to hold fast.

Tyrion goes pale and quiet, dropping his eyes to avoid her gaze. 

Daenerys takes that momentary pause to gather herself again and sooth Drogon and while she does so she also takes the opportunity to cast her gaze around the throne room to study the faces of those assembled; and once she has she’s surprised to find that there is precious little support for her former Hand to be found there. 

The Westerosi do not care for the little lion, it seems, and that thought makes Daenerys pause as the faint ghost of an idea begins to form at the back of her mind.

“ I find myself in an untenable position.” She continues, her tone once more even and measured. The courtiers are watching her, waiting breathlessly to see if she is her father’s daughter. Waiting for her to prove all their darkest fears well founded. 

They want her to be a monster. 

Unfortunately for them, however, Daenerys has never much cared for doing what others expect of her and she has no intention of giving them what they want. 

She will not be their Mad Queen

Her voice is calm but implacable when she speaks again but this time she doesn’t address Tyrion himself but rather the court at large. 

“ ………... This man has betrayed my trust. He has conspired with my enemies and not only that, but he’s had the audacity to use my own supplies to aid and abet in their escape! My own gold was used to grease the palms of those who aided him in his treasonous plot!”

“I am a merciful woman when I can be, my Lords and Ladies.” She is ice, cold reason and graciousness. Daenerys scans the crowd carefully. She watches the pale faces of those present, and as she does she comes to a decision.

“ I spared this city and those within it even after they took up arms against me.” She continues firmly. “ I also chose not to burn the Red Keep in order to spare the lives of the innocent people sheltering within it...even though I would have been well within my rights to burn it to the ground. It is my castle, after all. Built by my family. “ she sighs, allowing some of her weariness to show. Her waning patience. They know what other men would have done in her position. What they themselves would have done were it them on Drogon’s back in her place.

“ ....a decision that in hindsight , it seems, was perhaps the wrong one. “ she carefully allows the courtiers to see only the barest edges of her anger. Her frustration. Not too much, not genuine fury, but something colder and far more lasting and It works even better than she could have hoped.

There is fear on their faces now....and that fear is what will spark their rage.

The folk of King’s Landing have seen first hand what dragons can do, now. The devastation they can cause when roused to fury. They have seen it and now thanks to Tyrion’s stupidity they will fear that she might change her mind. There is nothing they could do to stop her if she does. A hundred scorpions couldn’t fell Drogon when she rode him to take the city. What could they do against her? 

It is an animal fear that moves inside them now. Instinctive and powerful. .The same instinct that allows a wolf to gnaw its own leg off in order to escape a hunter’s trap

They fear the wrath of the dragon....and because they can’t fight her they will blame Tyrion for bringing it down upon them. 

“ Had I burnt the city, Cersei and the Kingslayer would not have escaped King’s Landing alive. I ask you, my lords and ladies. What what would you do with a man who has conspired in secret to smuggle his Queen’s greatest enemy, her protector and their bastard out of the city ahead of her advancing army?”

“......how would _you_ deal with a man who has abused his position so flagrantly in order to avoid his sister’s capture and just punishment for the multitude of crimes she’s committed against both the people of this country and against the rightful Queen herself?” 

The mood of the crowd has shifted to fury and a hundred pairs of angry eyes are fixed on the Imp where he kneels cowering on the floor before her. Daenerys cannot vent her rage against her treacherous Hand herself...but if her gambit works out according to plan she won’t have to. The people of Westeros will punish him far more harshly than she ever would...and they will not be able to blame her for the outcome after it is done. 

Sometimes true power isn’t controlling others...it is knowing when to give up that control entirely.

Tyrion is truly afraid now, Daenerys can see it in his eyes. He’s afraid and he knows exactly what she’s doing. He has realized that as much as he’d been listening to HER during their talks she had been listening during their little fireside chats too and how many times had he spoken of how disliked he was by those around him for no cause at all?

Many, 

So very many.

. 

“ .....I. “ Tyrion at last speaks, knowing that if he wants to live he must turn the tide of public opinion in his favor. He pauses a moment, then raises his eyes and meets Dany’s gaze again. 

“ I would hope that I would be merciful enough to understand what it means to love ones family more than one’s self. “ he’s looking at her again with those pleading eyes. Begging her to be merciful. To understand why he’d betrayed her. Why he had abandoned her in her hour of greatest need.

“ You’ve won, your grace.” Once upon a time the desperation in her former Hand’s voice would have moved Daenerys. However, she finds that now that his words leave her cold. Tyrion continues regardless, his unease growing with every moment that passes. It makes his words clumsy. His. Silver tongue has turned to lead. 

“The Seven Kingdoms are yours. What possible threat is one woman and a baby to you? Cersei is gone. She can’t harm you now and you have what you’ve always wanted. Your throne. Your family’s keep. Have you no mercy for an innocent child? “

For a moment Dany almost can’t believe that he’s said it. She stares Tyrion wide eyed, shocked out of her fury entirely by the absolute stupidity that had just left the lips of a man who was once reputed to be the cleverest man in all the Seven Kingdoms. Dany also notices, much to her surprise, that she’s not the only one who’s questioning what they’ve just heard. Everyone else appears to have come to the exact same conclusion that she has at the exact same moment. 

Tyrion Lannister isn’t a genius....he’s an idiot. 

Someone in the back of the crowd loses their battle for self control and a high, almost hysterical giggle rings out. It’s one step too far and the tension of the moment breaks and that giggle spreads like Wildfire until nearly the entire court is laughing. Some in shock, some in amusement but all of them are looking at Tyrion as if he’s sprouted a second head.

Including Daenerys herself.

“I wouldn’t really know what it’s like to have a family.” Daenerys replies, once the giggles have died down enough that she wo not have to fight to be heard.

“....if you recall, your family killed all of mine.” The last remaining giggles die almost instantly as the chill in Daenerys’s tone spreads through the room and Tyrion at last realizes his error.

“ Your father’s men raped my Goodsister and then killed her and her children. Your father laid their broken bodies at Robert Baratheon’s feet. Wrapped in cloaks so as not to offend the sensibilities of the court ladies, I assume.”

“..... Right where you’re stand now, in fact. If the tales are accurate. “ Tyrion has gone white with fear. He stares at her, and Daenerys knows that he at last understands what he’s done, just how badly he’s misstepped. 

“ .....Your brother put a sword through my father’s back. Then cut his throat. Again, right where you’re standing now.” she pauses a moment before continuing. Her next words shocking every man and woman in the room to the bone. 

“....Justified, true enough. My father was mad and his death was a necessary evil. I have no quarrel with Ser Jaime Lannister for his actions that day. He acted nobly and with sound cause for the protection of others....but the man he killed was my father none the less and your sweet sister had my only remaining friend beheaded on the city walls after she’d already murdered my child and she forced me to watch her do it. “

“ Your grace..” Tyrion’s voice cracks, and if she were as stupid as he believes her to be the tears welling up in his eyes would have looked sincere. His pretense of regret and sorrow would have been believable. 

But Daenerys Targaryen is no fool, and she will have no more of Tyrion Lannister’s lies. 

“I think you’ve spoken more than enough, my Lord. “ Daenerys’s voice is as cold as the winter wind blowing outside and she can see the exact moment Tyrion’s self control shatters. 

“ I have the right to a fair trial! I have the right to be heard!” 

Grey Worm looks to Daenerys face for a brief moment before punching Tyrion hard behind his left ear. The blow is precise and calculated, dazing the smaller man and silencing his shouting instantly. Grey Worm then stands at attention once more as if nothing had happened. He doesn’t strike him again, but he doesn’t need to. One blow was sufficient to the purpose.

“I confess. I do not entirely trust my own judgment in this matter. It is too close, too personal for me to pretend to be unbiased. “ Daenerys pauses, and Ser Barristan’s words from years before come back to her...and she smiles.

“A very wise man once told me that my father gave people the justice that _he_ thought they deserved and that it made him feel powerful and right...right up until the end. That wise man was Ser Barristan Selmy, who died nobly in my service in Meereen. In his memory and out of respect for his council instead of allowing myself to give Lord Tyrion the justice I believe he deserves, instead, I will put his fate in the hands of others. In YOUR hands, my Lords and Ladies. People who are not so close to the matter at hand as I am and who will be more likely to be impartial in their judgment.”

The disbelief on the faces of the men and women who have filled the throne room is almost enough to make Daenerys smile but it is the absolute terror on Tyrion’s face as he finally regains his wits enough to realize what’s happening around him that at last makes her lips curve. Just a touch. The faintest ghost of a smile. 

“A male and female representative from each House present here in the City will present themselves to me before noon tomorrow. They will then go into seclusion together and they will decide the fate of my former Hand. They will not come out again until the matter is unanimously agreed upon in order to prevent any attempts at bribery or accusations of favoritism. I myself will also withdraw until a decision is made so as not to influence their decision unduly. I think that this will be the fairest way to deal with the matter at hand “

“You may go, my Lords and Ladies. Discuss amongst yourselves whom you wish to send to represent you. It matters not at all to me who you choose...save that they be of age and of sound mind. “ 

“Grey Worm. Escort Lord Tyrion back to his cell and then send in a Maester to look at his head. Not Samwell Tarley, if you please. Any other will serve, however. I wish to be certain that he isn’t unduly damaged before his sentence is passed.” 

“Yes, my Queen.” 

When Daenerys stands again every man and woman in the room bow low before her as she passes. She strides towards the door, her pale face expressionless until she puts them all behind her...and then as Tyrion begins to weep and with her face out of sight of the court Daenerys at last allows herself to smile.

Let the Great Game begin; if she must be forced to play then she means to play to win


End file.
